The invention relates to a method of shaping and threading the inner wall of tubes and, more particularly, thermal exchanger tubes made of materials having high mechanical properties.
There exists a process to broach grooves onto the external wall of a cylinder (U.S. Pat. No. 4,294,568). According to this process, two adjacent grooves are simultaneously broached. One groove is broached by using a roughing tool and the other groove is broached by using a finishing tool. The roughing tool has a staggered profile and the finishing tool matches the final profile of the groove. If this process enables grooves to be made that have a complex profile, the process cannot be adapted to the simple and fast production required with complex rifling on the inside of a tube.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,411,569 also discloses a broaching process for the rifling of a gun barrel in which several broaches are axially joined to a rod while being free to rotate. The traction of the rod machines the grooves. Each broach has a different profile: the first broach ensures a rough machining and the last broach ensures the finishing. The drawback to this process lies in that it can only be used to produce a groove with a simple profile. The process cannot be used to make a groove having a complex profile covering the entire internal surface of the barrel and comprising a succession of concave and convex profiles.